Motion City Soundtrack Share New Single “You Know Who The Fuck We Are”
Today, pop-punk icons Motion City Soundtrack share "You Know Who The Fuck We Are,” the latest preview of their new album ‘The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World’ out on September 19 via Epitaph Records.
With its infectious palm-muted power, “You Know Who The Fuck We Are” embodies the carefree exuberance that permeates throughout the new record. The single injects a dose of unrestrained energy, fueled by MCS’s resurgence after a decade-long hiatus.
“You Know Who The Fuck We Are”
“Don’t Call It a Comeback” isn’t just the name of a song off Motion City Soundtrack’s 2003 debut I Am The Movie, it’s also an apt way to summarize the band’s mission statement. During their initial run from 1997 to 2016, the Minneapolis-based group released six celebrated albums, toured the world countless times and achieved gold status for their hit single “Everything Is Alright.”
After taking a three-year hiatus, the band — vocalist/guitarist Justin Pierre, guitarist Joshua Cain, bassist Matt Taylor, keyboardist Jesse Johnson and drummer Tony Thaxton — started performing live again in 2019, but even the most optimistic fans didn’t necessarily expect a follow-up to 2015’s Panic Stations. “When we started conceptualizing the idea for this record, I was thinking about what we loved about doing this originally,” Cain explains. The result is The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World, an album that sees the band transmuting the last decade of life experiences into the catchiest songs of their career.
To record the album, the band reunited with Sean O’Keefe (Fall Out Boy, Plain White T’s) at the legendary Chicago studio Electrical Audio. With features from Fall Out Boy’s Patrick Stump (who also co-wrote the song “Particle Physics”), Citizen’s Mat Kerekes and Deanna Belos of Sincere Engineer, the album sees the band reclaiming their crown as one of punk rock’s most accessible — and infectious — acts. However, the most impressive aspect of The Same Old Wasted Wonderful World is the fact that instead of relying solely on nostalgia, Motion City Soundtrack continues to experiment outside their comfort zone. “It's a very interesting thing to feel like we made the most important record of our career this late in the game,” Johnson explains.
“I think that if you look at a lot of our past records, it’s about ‘What’s wrong? What am I not getting right? Why do I feel fucking crazy? Why can’t I figure this out, and I figured it out,” Pierre admits. “It’s almost like I felt I didn’t have an identity [in the past] and now by working through the hard stuff, I know who I am.” With that sense of self-discovery mirrored by the music, when the final track fades out it may be the conclusion of the album, but in reality, it’s just the beginning of another chapter of Motion City Soundtrack’s journey.